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Forum:2018-12-12 (Wednesday)
Discussion for comic for . The wiki pages don't just write themselves, join in on the fun. ---- So, that's a very young Albia in the last panel? She's, umm, bulky. Hefty. Or I suppose it could just be the current Albia taking on the appearance of whatever subject is under discussion. ➤ ::Bronze-Age Wilma Flintstone vibe, going on. Bosda Di'Chi (talk) 11:50, December 13, 2018 (UTC) : Important safety tip: Don't fat-shame a deity. Argadi (talk) 10:40, December 12, 2018 (UTC) :: I wasn't thinking about shaming her, just wondering what's different and why. Maybe that's muscle instead of fat, because she had to wrestly wooly mammoths or something to get dinner. Bkharvey (talk) 01:48, December 13, 2018 (UTC) ::: I mean, beauty standards change over time. This look reminds me of the Woman of Willendorf, buildwise. PhoenixTalion (talk) 16:56, December 13, 2018 (UTC) Is (the current) Albia literally turning her mind to the Well? Does she stop doing whatever else she was doing? Or alternatively, can she multiprocess? (Unlike the young people who claim they can, says the research.) ➤ : I was figuring the Well is like a long term storage device for her memories, I wouldn't be surprised if she could access it at a distance, but that doesn't mean it might not have a life and/or semi-sentience of it's own. (Ah, see we're discussing it below.) Solomon Keyes (talk) 23:57, December 13, 2018 (UTC) Does "second ascension" mean second breaking through? I suppose it must, but then the Mirror must have come before her godhood/immortality/etc. Can the Mirror have caused the godhood? Is this a shoutout to 2001? ➤ I wonder how significant "before the channel" will be to the plot. Presumably it means that at that time, England and France were one landmass. It can't be that the channel was formed by England sinking, if that happened only 300 years ago. Maybe they had global warming and the ocean rose. ➤ Aside from some tvtropes Rule you're going to tell me about, is there some good in-story reason why people have to schlep out to the Henge to ask Albia questions, instead of just asking Albia in person? I mean, surely Albia herself doesn't have to schlep out there. Bkharvey (talk) 06:15, December 12, 2018 (UTC) :: Queen Albia must indeed be very old. Before the channel, there was "Doggerland ", which disappeared around 6500 BC Malakit (talk) 06:53, December 12, 2018 (UTC) :The entire point of the henge and memory well is that even Albia herself is not able to, or does not want to, remember all that. (Thorpe: "there are still limits", two pages ago.) Regarding schlepping, maybe Albia has some special link, but she would have to consult the well and cannot remember herself. I figure she backs up her mind every couple of decades here, and then actively deletes anything not relevant to the present. — gpvos♫ 07:37, December 12, 2018 (UTC) ::Yes, I get that... But presumably the point of the ritual is that people can't just show up and access her memories without permission. So we're using the "special link," and some of Albia's attention, to ask permission. Given that, and given that the "Ask" in the last panel suggests that Albia is still giving her attention to the questions after giving permission, why wouldn't it make more sense for the questioners to ask Albia and let her instantly make contact with the Well? Bkharvey (talk) 07:44, December 12, 2018 (UTC) ::: It's possible that the connection between Albia and the Well has to be triggered from the Well's side through the Keeper's ritual, sort of like connecting a USB hard drive to your computer--not a perfect analogy, but it's the best I can do at the moment. Albia may have set it up that way to prevent her conscious mind from wandering into those memories at inconvenient/dangerous moments and not being able to get back to the present easily/in time/at all. If she can multiprocess, having suppliants use the Henge could also allow Albia to answer their questions without granting an official audience that would take time away from her other current business. (Even if I'm right, though, that doesn't rule out the possibility that she specifically wanted Gil taken to the Henge to ask his questions for more reasons than not having room in her schedule to grant him an audience yet, like getting him further away from Agatha and keeping him distracted in ways that don't require headline-worthy derring-do.) (ramblin_rosie) 08:14, December 12, 2018 (UTC) ::: Albia is the head of an empire. She has a large number of demands in that role, and also has things she wants to accomplish. Her time is valuable so anything that can be done without her direct intervention should be done without her direct intervention. Especially a task that puts Albia in the role of a simple courier. ➤ ::: Also, the bandwidth of direct communication is much higher then having Albia listen and repeat. Important details may be dropped, or obscured with unintentional wording changes. Argadi (talk) 10:40, December 12, 2018 (UTC) In the last panel, is Lady Astarte leaning over the wall of the Well because she's fainted, or because the ritual requires her to stir the waters? Bkharvey (talk) 07:39, December 12, 2018 (UTC) : Or because she is prostrating herself on the edge of the pool? Argadi (talk) 12:38, December 12, 2018 (UTC) So, I think this is a good time to remember that this story will eventually have had time travel. I think the mirrors are Sufficiently Advanced Technology that will eventually be revealed to be the work of a future Spark or Sparks. Also, I desperately want to know more about what it was like to be a Spark in the Mesolithic. What does mad science look like when knapped flint is the bleeding edge of tech, besides standing stones? PhoenixTalion (talk) 21:37, December 12, 2018 (UTC) : Agriculture? In the "present" of GG, they have technology that we don't have yet (brain transfer) and that the Victorians didn't have (telephones, sometimes). No reason to assume that the very early history of technology wasn't accelerated too. But that's a good point about the creator(s) of the Mirrors. It'll be especially interesting if my guess about the Mirrors creating the Queens (by causing the second breaking through) is right. The question is what would motivate the future Spark(s) to intervene in that way. Bkharvey (talk) 01:48, December 13, 2018 (UTC) :: That just makes me want to see Mad Farming even more. "Behold! I have bent the mighty aurochs to my will! Tremble before the power of my Doom-cattle!" Anyway, I just have a gut feeling we're dealing with causality loops on an even larger scale than "Agatha's actions are what leads the Muse of Time to open the window in Mechanicsburg, which ultimately leads to her own breakthrough". We've seen regular Sparks break through after handling Mad technology and becoming inspired, so even though we have no evidence of the Mirrors doing something like that, I could buy it. Hopefully we'll learn more about Albia's second breakthrough as we go and that will give us some clues. I'd be interested in knowing whether there were any Goddess-Queens discovered or attested that weren't connected to the Mirror network. PhoenixTalion (talk) 16:56, December 13, 2018 (UTC) ::: The "evidence of the Mirrors doing something like that" is that they look like the 2001 Monolith. I grant you it's not much evidence, especially since we know people other than the immortal Queens have used Mirrors without becoming Queened. Oh, and we know that Albia's Mirror predates her second breakthough. I grant that it's still a leap. Bkharvey (talk) 22:25, December 13, 2018 (UTC) : P.S. Nice use of the future perfect. You don't see that every day. :-) Bkharvey (talk) 01:51, December 13, 2018 (UTC) :P.P.S. The tower hidden inside the Henge isn't very Mesolithic-looking. Although I suppose it could have been a later addition. Bkharvey (talk) 06:06, December 13, 2018 (UTC) I suppose Astarte would have already mentioned it if the Klaus/Albia affair had produced offspring. But there could be a half-sibling of Gil running around. (Not that the story is wanting for characters or plot twists.) Argadi (talk) 11:39, December 13, 2018 (UTC) : I doubt it, but I think it's interesting that twice now English Princesses have been mentioned, but no Princes. Also useful to note this firmly pegs Klaus's age at at least 60, and unless Bill and Barry are older than I thought, this would have been before his adventures with the Heterodyne boys. PhoenixTalion (talk) 22:28, December 13, 2018 (UTC) :: Compare the lack of Princes with the apparent Skifander bias towards female, and the lack of female sparks. Or maybe it's just random. :: The internal Chronology has the affair around the start of the Heterodyne Boys adventures. (I don't know the basis for the start of those adventures--it isn't mentioned on that page.) Argadi (talk) 00:39, December 14, 2018 (UTC) ::: Exactly. No God-Kings either, that we know of. I can totally buy that Albia is deliberately only having daughters, in hopes that eventually one would live up to her mother's potential. Or, I'm reading something into nothing and there have been literally hundreds English royal princes, Albia just said "treated like one of our royal princesses" because Agatha is a woman. But I can't help but feel like there's a connection between the overall lack of female Sparks and the Goddess-Queens being monogendered. It's implied that part of the local problem was Tarvek's father pitching every remotely eligble girl into the summoning engine for over a decade, but that hardly explains why the Heterodynes haven't had a daughter in generations (possibly since Euphrosnia). Maybe it's a tradeoff, that there's fewer of them but they have a higher maximum potential. Or maybe there's some kind of force actively working against female Sparks specifically because they might grow up to be Goddesses. PhoenixTalion (talk) 16:26, December 14, 2018 (UTC) The memory pool version of the pre-second ascension Albia is aware of her future second ascension. Not totally surprising as the memories were only stored after the second ascension. Argadi (talk) 11:39, December 13, 2018 (UTC) : Are you thinking that's an ancient Albia summoned from the past? I'm assuming it's the actual current Albia presenting herself in costume as she always does. Bkharvey (talk) 01:00, December 14, 2018 (UTC) :: Well, since Albia isn't exactly here, and her memory is, I interpret that as a memory from an Albia that looked like that. Maybe there will be a better understanding in a few hours. Argadi (talk) 01:27, December 14, 2018 (UTC)